Dick Cavett

            On Sunday morning there were fewer bedbugs than usual so maybe the diatomaceous earth has taken its slow effect. 

            I found a picture of Boris Vian as a child and posted it on my Boris Vian Facebook page. 

            I worked out the chords for most of the first verse of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have it done tomorrow and that will probably establish the pattern for the song. 

            I weighed 90.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the first of two out-of-tune sessions. 

            Around midday I did a thorough vacuuming of my bedroom and put fresh carpet tape around the edge of my futon and also around the edge of my mattress cover for hopefully double protection. 

            I weighed 92.2 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and slept longer than I expected so it was too late to take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 92 kilos at 17:45, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since July 21. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Rudolph’s sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, three sliced souvlaki, and five-year-old cheddar while watching a 1974 interview of Carol Burnett by Dick Cavett.

            He introduces it by saying that when he first met Carol she inspired affection and he’s heard from others who have had the same experience. She never has a phony moment in real life. 

            Dick comes out and after the applause dies down he says, “Let’s hope this one gets on”. He’s referring to a previous show that was not aired because it was determined that there wasn’t enough balance of opinion. He disagrees and the audience cheers. He doesn’t know yet if this one will air because he’s not here now. “I appear to be here and to you at home I’m here but I’m actually somewhere else, which raises the question why you can hear me… I was gonna do 90 minutes with Carol Burnett but now I may have to do half the show with an unfunny woman.” 

            Carol Burnett has been called the United States’ female Charlie Chaplin. Dick says he doesn’t know anyone he likes better than Carol Burnett. 

            He says he had a list of 78 things to ask her but tore it up because he doesn’t want this to be a difficult evening for her. He asks, “How did you lose your virginity?” “When I was a nun in the Alps.” She says she was pure until she got married. “It’s only the second time I’ve ever asked that question” “Bette Davis you asked and she gave you the same answer. In fact she and I had the same fella.” 

            She talks about how she used to play Tarzan. Dick says he met Johnny Weismuller and it was one of the great thrills of his life. Dick says he saw his first movie back in Gibbon, Nebraska. He doesn’t remember what he saw but it had cowboys. He says he was taken by violence and even now he loves a violent movie. Carol says even Bambi makes her upset. He admits it’s a horrifying movie. Carol says she watched The Godfather with her hands over her eyes. Dick says he doesn’t like film violence if it looks too real. He saw a movie in which Eli Wallach had his teeth beaten out (That might be in The Good the Bad and the Ugly). Dick says that was a little much. Carol says she liked the westerns where you’d get shot and die but now it’s everything coming out. 

            Carol says everything seemed a little dirtier when she left the movie theatre as a child. 

            Carol says she has a tooth fetish. Every time she passes a sink she brushes them and so she hasn’t had a cavity in 12 years. 

            Carol says she has no theories about comedy but what makes people laugh is being surprised. The hardest thing is being a comedy writer for a variety show because they have to come up with 4 or 5 sketches for different characters. You can’t win em all. There are many times when we have to go out and do something none of us are in love with. 

            She sometimes doesn’t find her character until the day of taping and she’s wearing the costume because she works from the outside in. There’s an old lady she does called Stella Toddler and Carol was trying to find a voice for her. She went into the washroom on the second floor and sat in a cubicle to be alone and work on the voice. What she found was a low voice little bit like Gabby Hayes and she sat there talking for a while. When she came out there were three women just standing there. She left without washing her hands. 

            Carol lives in the old Betty Grable house. Betty was on her show in the first season and they invited her over. She walked through the house and got teary eyed. She was a wonderful person and never took her stardom that seriously.

            Every Friday night at Hollywood High there was a dance and she’d go but only either dance with her girlfriend or play ping pong in the game room. The guys that did ask her to dance had pimples, bad breath and couldn’t keep time. 

            Carol loves chewing ice. 

            Carol and Dick sing “A Fine Romance” by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields from the 1936 film Swing Time. The set rolls to the left while they are sitting on it and they step to centre stage. When they are done Carol says, “That was really terrible!” Then they sit down on the edge of the stage and Carol arranges her legs so it doesn’t expose too much. There is apparently a priest sitting in the audience and Carol asks, “Okay father?” They sing “Two Sleepy People” by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser from the 1938 film Thanks for the Memory. Afterwards Carol notices that Dick’s eyes are shining. She says he ought to do a musical but he’d need a little more rehearsal. Dick shows the tape of their earlier rehearsal of “A Fine Romance” and then Dick puts his hand on Carol’s back she moves it down to her hip. Then she throws her hip out of joint as she’s able to do. He says he’s never known another woman who could do that. Carol says, “You told me your wife can do that.” “Oh, that’s right.” They show an earlier part of the rehearsal when Carol first hears Dick sing and she cracks up. Carol explains she was laughing out of sheer joy. 

            Dick asks if she ever gets the actor’s dream of forgetting her lines and she has. She’s doing Six Rooms right now with Alan Alda. It’s a warm comedy about adultery. 

            Dick tells Carol she has some of the most beautiful legs he’s ever seen. 

            Carol says most of the people she knows in show business are happy and especially the big ones. James Stewart and Lucille Ball are terrific people. Dick says there are also some true swine. Carol says it attracts them. Dick asks her to name some of her favourite swine. She says Porky Pig. 

            Dick says Carol’s show is more like repertory theatre than most TV shows. 

            Carol says she had a wonderful year with her dad when he went on the wagon but even when he was drunk he was very kind. Her mother was a nasty drunk but she was funny. She only wishes they lived until she was making enough money to cure them. They both died at the age of 46. 

            Carol says the movie Pete and Tilly in which she starred with Walter Matthau was too serious. She was worried that since she and Walter were known as comic actors that they would be expecting the film to be a comedy. So she underplayed her character and felt very stiff. 

            Dick lets the audience ask questions. 

            Someone asks Carol if the parties she goes to are different now that she’s successful. She says the parties she went to in New York when she was starting out were in run down apartments. She doesn’t go to that many parties because she likes to spend time with her family but when she does go they’re usually in a big house and they play games like charades and treasure hunt and those are the most fun parties. 

            Someone asks her to do her Charo impersonation. 

            Someone asks if she got in trouble for imitating the Nixon family in a sketch. She says there wasn’t a lot to latch onto with the Nixons. She had more fun playing Lady Bird Johnson because she was an outgoing Texan. 

            Someone asks what she would do if she wasn’t in show business. She says she’d probably be a school teacher of the fourth, fifth, or sixth grades. A school teacher in the audience tells her not to do it.

            Someone asks about the earthquakes in California. She says the big one they had three years ago happened around sunrise. Carol headed for Erin’s room and she was 2 at the time, standing in her crib and holding on while the room was shaking and saying “Good morning mommy!” Carol picked her up to take her to the other room so they could all die together and Erin said, “I wanna wear my pink dress!”

            Carol says when she was a kid her closet was the bathroom shower rack because her grandmother was a packrat and even saved peanut butter jars in their one closet. If a guy came over and wanted to use the bathroom she’d tell him it was out of order and direct him to the Shell station. Her grandmother was messy and so they’d just sit in the hotel lobby. 

            Dick asks Carol what books were important to her as a kid. She says The Yearling. She also liked Grimm's Fairy Tales. 

            He asks what she would study if she went back to college and she answers music and dance. She says she’s terrified whenever she has to dance on her show. 

            Dick asks Carol what she likes about him. She says his sex appeal and his brains. 

            Dick Cavett attended Yale University where he majored in drama and met his future wife Carrie Nye. He played in and directed plays on the campus radio station. He acted with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1956. He made his TV debut on Sgt. Bilko in 1959. Dick and Carrie married in 1964 and were together until she died 42 years later. He was too short to land lead roles in shows. He started as a stand up comic and then became a writer on The Tonight Show first for Jack Paar and then Johnny Carson. he also wrote for Merv Griffin. He starred in the movie Thayer of West Point. The Dick Cavett Show ran from 1968 to 1974 on ABC and then one more year on CBS. He earned the reputation as a thinking man’s talk show host. His show was third in ratings behind Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin but for a late night talk show he was considered second to Carson. He was famous for attracting guests that hated appearing on talk shows like Katherine Hepburn, Laurence Olivier, and Marlon Brando. He often paired guests with opposing views like Jim Brown and Lester Maddox. He hosted Saturday Night Live in 1976. His PBS Dick Cavett Show ran from 1977 to 1982. His USA network Dick Cavett Show ran from 1985 to 1986. His CNBC Dick Cavett Show ran from 1989 to 1996. He was nominated for ten Emmy Awards and won three. His book Brief Encounters was published in 2014. He later wrote a regular column for The New York Times. He speaks fluent German and is an agnostic.